Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Star Lord: Secret Origins

The local art house theater (Maiden Alley Cinema--they're awesome, give them money) has a movie series sponsored by Schlafley Beer (it's very tastey, give them money too) where they play classic movies accompanied by beer. This year, they did a preview for the event that showed clips from the movies in the series. I've probably seen the trailer at least 3 times a month for the past 6 months. One of the movies this year was Boogie Nights, the trailer for which includes the following image:

As most of you know, Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy also had a couple of Awesome Mix Tapes, so the first time I saw the trailer after seeing Guardians, I formed a theory that Dirk Diggler was Star Lord's dad. It made perfect sense; We know Star Lord's father was an alien, which would explain Dirk's "special gift." I promptly forgot about the theory and watched whatever movie I was seeing, but remembered it again every time I saw the trailer.

Eventually, I remembered my Star Lord/Dirk Diggler theory while I wasn't in a movie theater and posted it to Facebook. A couple days later, Chris Sprouse (he draws funny books and also deserves some of your money) pointed out the fatal flaw in my theory. Namely, that the Awesome Mix Tape did not belong to Dirk Diggler, but to this guy:

I think that Molina's character from Boogie Nights being Star Lord's father is an even stronger theory. After all:

This guy and his firework-throwing pal were really damn weird. When I saw the movie, I assumed it was due to drugs, but maybe it's because they don't fully understand human behavior.

Look at him.

His robe is made out of material that looks like a space suit.

Every time I see Boogie Nights, I wonder why the hell the scene is in there. It's a completely different tone than most of the movie and doesn't really add anything to the plot or character development. On top of that, one of the major characters of the scene (Molina) doesn't appear anywhere else in the movie and another (the porn star who isn't Marky Mark or Dewey Cox) is basically an extra in the other scenes he's in. Setting up a relationship between Molina's character and the star of an extremely unlikely movie based on an obscure comic book series that wouldn't be made for another 20 years really does seem like the best explanation for why this scene was both filmed and left in the movie.